Rock Music

The Beginnings Chuck Berry invented rock and roll in 1955. Berry was a black man playing black music. But times had changed: white kids were listening to rhythm and blues throughout the Northeast, and white musicians were playing rhythm and blues side to side with country music. The music industry soon understood that there was a white market for black music and social prejudice, racial barriers, could nothing against the forces of capitalism. Rock and roll was an overnight success. The music industry promoted white idols such as Elvis Presley, but the real heroes were the likes of Chuck Berry, who better symbolize the synergy between the performer and the audience. The black rockers, and a few white rockers, epitomized the youth's rebellious mood, their need for a soundtrack to their dreams of anticonformism. Their impact was long lasting, but their careers were short lived. For one reason or another, they all stopped recording after a brief time. Rock and roll was inherited by white singers, such as Presley, who often performed songs composed by obscure black musicians. White rockers became gentler and gentler, thereby drowning rock and roll's very reason to exist. Buddy Holly was the foremost white rocker of the late Fifties, while cross-pollination with country music led to the vocal harmonies of the Everly Brothers and to the instrumental rock of Duan Eddy. The kids' malaise returned, with a much taller wave, when folksingers started singing about the problems of the system. Kids who had not identified with Woody Guthrie's stories of poor people, identified immediately with folksingers singing about the Vietnam war and civil rights. Bob Dylan was arguably the most influential musician of the era. He led the charge against the Establishment with simple songs and poetic lyrics. A generation believed in him and followed his dreams. Music became the expression of youth's ambitions. At the same time, the story of commercial rock music took a bizarre turn when it hit the coast of California: the Beach Boys invented surf music. Surf music was just rock and roll music, but with a spin: very sophisticated vocal harmonies. California had its own ideas about what rock and roll should be: a music for having fun at the beaches and at the parties. The Beach Boys' vocal harmonies, a natural bridge between rockers and doo-wop, turned out to be a fantastic delivery vehicle for the melo

Rock Music

There is not one single history of rock music. There are several.

There is the history of the hits. Most books on rock music are histories of the hits. The charts decide, i.e. the masses decide. Marx would have loved it, except there is a catch: the masses tend to buy what is publicized by the media, which is what corporations pay money to publicize. Marketing decides the charts. Invest a few million dollars on me and even I, regardless of my musical talent, will break into the charts, i.e. will become part of "that" history of rock music. Most books on the subject are, in fact, books about the music industry. Very often, the profile of a musician is simply a list of her/his successes in the Billboard charts ("that album broke into the charts", "that album hit #5", "that album sold one million copies"). In other words, books on rock music tend to treat musicians like corporations or start-ups, judging them by their revenues, profits and marketing strategy.

Then there are national versions of the history of rock music. Italians have been more exposed to British music than USA music. The Eagles and Creedence Clearwater Revival are hardly known, whereas the Moody Blues and David Bowie are almost household names. The history of rock music viewed from Italy is sharply different from the history of rock music viewed from, say, Boston.

Finally, there are the individual histories of rock music. Each person grew up with a different set of idols, and tends to center the history of rock music around those idols, whether Led Zeppelin or Doobie Brothers.

My history of rock music is not a history of the charts (which I consider an aberration), it is not a national version (I grew up in two continents and have traveled to some 70 countries), and it is not an individual version (I grew up with classical music, literature and science, not with rock music).

I simply listened to a lot of music, researched the origins of the various styles, and drew my conclusions. Very often, I was unaware of how many records an artist sold (I learned it later, when thousands of fans sent me nasty complaints). Very often, I am unaware of what was popular in Italy or Boston.

Also, I feel no particular sympathy for any rock musician. My "idols" are Ernst, Shostakovic, Pessoa, Coltrane... not rock musicians.

This is the most subjective history of rock music that one could possibly write. But also the most impartial, independent, and balanced.

It ends up being mostly a history of "alternative" rock music. While this is a gross approximation, it has become customary to separate "mainstream" music and "alternative" music. If you do what I did (listen to the music without letting marketing & sales influence you), it is very unlikely that you will end up selecting the musicians who topped the charts, and very likely that you will be impressed by countless obscure recordings that were twenty years ahead of their time even though nobody heard them.

Fans of mainstream music will claim that it all boils down to personal taste. I beg to disagree. There is an absolute factor that bestows a form of primacy on alternative music. Tell anyone (alternative or mainstream musician) that s/he is playing mainstream music and s/he will get upset. Tell anyone (alternative or mainstream musician) that s/he is playing alternative music and s/he will be flattered. Fans may buy according to the media and to marketing campaigns, but they, too, implicitly recognize the primacy of alternative music. If you tell a Beatles fan that the Beatles were mainstream, you risk your life. The evidence is just overwhelming: even the most mainstream musicians tacitly agree that alternative music is more important, and even the masses that buy mainstream music tacitly agree that alternative music is more important.

In every day's life, people tend to talk about what people tend to talk about. In a sense, people think they are talking, but, in reality, they are only quoting (other people). Alternative music is an attempt to break this endless loop, to talk about something not because everybody is talking about it but because we actually have something to say.

At the same time, rediscovering alternative rock and giving it its dues is also a way to restore the reputation of rock music among the more sophisticated audiences. Too many rock critics blindly follow the instructions from the major record companies and hail whichever "next big thing" happens to get a larger marketing budget. Rock critics who cannot break free from this commercial slavery have done a huge disservice to rock music. Anyone who is into Beethoven's symphonies or Wagner's operas and is told that the Beatles' catchy three-minute tunes are the masterpieces of rock music will simply smile and politely nod, but never listen to rock music again; and will thus never learn that rock music has also produced 20-minute avantgarde suites and hour-long electronic poems that are easily as complex and as futuristic as contemporary classical music. If the Beatles are at the top of the pyramid, who in heaven wants to listen to the rest of the pyramid? But if the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, etc. are at the "bottom" of the pyramid (and in my opinion they are closer to the bottom than to the top), then it makes a lot of sense for anyone into serious music to investigate the rest of the pyramid.

From this "alternative" point of view (one that puts creativity before sales) there were four watershed years in the history of rock music: 1955, when Chuck Berry "invented" rock'n'roll as we know it; 1966, when Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, the Doors, the Velvet Underground and others caused a massive revolution in a slumbering music scene; 1976, when the "new wave" and punk-rock caused a similar revolution in a similarly slumbering scene; and 1987-88, the years when Pixies, Fugazi, etc invented indie-pop. Each of these creative ages was followed by an era of "re-alignment" in which creativity was replaced by sell-out, as the record industry (and commercial bands) capitalized on the innovations of the previous years.

This book is divided in five parts that roughly mirror those periods. (My main regret is that I did not end the "Eighties" in 1988. That is the year when a number of new paradigm shifts emerged. It was just too convenient for me to use 1990 as the watershed year. But it is not. If I ever revise this book, I will move all bands born after 1988 into the "Nineties").

Traditionally, books on the history of rock music begin by defining rock music as the meeting of country music and rhythm'n'blues, which is roughly correct (I believe that the rhythm'n'blues component was much stronger than the country component but, of course, it all depends on whether you consider Chuck Berry or Elvis Presley as the founding father of rock'n'roll). However, this definition is out of touch with today's rock music. Today, rock music is a genre that employs sampling techniques, electronic instruments, digital/computer technology, cacophony, and ethnic sources (beyond African-American and Anglo-Irish). The roots of today's rock music lie in the technical and stylistic innovations brought about in the first half of the 20th century. Rock music is also part of a stream of "popular music", whose beginnings can be dated even further back, to the end of the 19th century. In fact, it would be more accurate to define today's rock music as the meeting of avantgarde music and popular music. Therefore, my "alternative" history of rock music begins much earlier than most books on the origins of rock'n'roll.

Having embarked in such a monumental effort, it was inevitable that I would feel the urge to rate the music, and to guide the readers towards an essential discography. The number in parentheses after the name of a group or musician is a way to rate their/her/his career. It is a three digit number that summarizes how many albums I have rated 9/10, 8/10 and 7/10. So, for example, Captain Beefheart is a 214, the highest rating in the book (2 of his albums are worth 9/10, one is an 8/10, and 4 are 7/10). When the number is only two digits, it means that the musician has no album worth 9/10; when it is only one digit, there is no album worth 8/10. (Needless to say, this system of rating is unfair to musicians who lived before the age of the album: sorry, I couldn't come up with a better system). In rating the albums, I was totally indifferent to whether the album had sold ten million copies or only two copies (neither piece of information says much about the quality of the music). There are many many more fans of famous stars than of obscure musicians, so I imagine that my ratings for famous albums will shock many more readers than my ratings for obscure albums. That, too, does not say much about the quality of the music.

For each album I indicate in parenthesis the year of release. Unlike classical music (in which what counts is the date of composition) and jazz music (that cares about the date of the recording), rock music uses release dates (and thus, sometimes, a song is credited to a date when the composer was already dead). I feel that the year of composition/recording is more important, but I didn't have the time to research the year of composition/recording for all albums. Even the year of release is often contentious: I used the dates that you can find at www.scaruffi.com -> Music -> Chronology of Albums.

My bias is towards the music, not the lyrics: it is called "rock music", not "rock literature". And there's a reason: as literature, it is worth very little. Even the greatest rock lyricists are, at best, mediocre poets. No surprise, therefore, that I rarely mention the lyrics of a song. The overall feeling is, in general, much more important than the literal message.

I have routinely changed the spelling of foreign words whenever they use a character that is not part of the English keyboard. We have been doing this for centuries to the Chinese, Arabic and Indian languages, so I don't see why we shouldn't do it for to French, Spanish, German, etc. For example, accented vowels are rendered in my book with the closest English vowel.

For further reading, my website "www.scaruffi.com" has thousands of pages on the musicians mentioned in this book. It also contains a much more detailed bibliography and a list of music magazines.

Piero Scaruffi

P.S. of 2006: It is obvious that my ratings have been decreasing throughout the first decade of the new century. Many readers ask me if there is a reason why the quality of music has worsened. I think it is an unfair question. The quality that we are referring to when we rate an album is about... albums. The album of the Sixties collected the best material of the artist (sometimes the best of many years). Today CDs are so cheap to make that sometimes musicians don't even rehearse before making a CD. I feel that it is unfair to compare two media that are actually very different: the album of the 1960s that went through a painful selection process and that cost a lot of money to make, and the album of the 2000s that goes through no selection process because it's so cheap to make. Needless to say, the former tends to be of higher quality than the latter. It's like asking if there has been a decrease in the quality of shoes. In the old days only rich people could afford shoes (poor people only had sandals) and those shoes were handmade with the best material. Now everybody has shoes but they are cheap crap that breaks after one year. Bottom line: i doubt anyone will ever make a 9/10 album again. We are living the transition to a new medium. Then we will have to change the way we rate music. Sometimes i think i should have done so a long time ago, instead of contributing to the industry of albums, which has become one of the biggest swindles of all times.
Main Bibliography

Bertoncelli Riccardo & Rizzi Cesare: Enciclopedia Rock (1987)
Christgau, Robert: Christgau's Record Guide (1981)
Clarke, Donald: Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music (1989)
Erlewine, Michael: All Music guide (1994)
Gillett, Charlie: The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll (1970)
Hardy, Phil & Laing Dave: Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular Music (1990)
Pareles, Jon: The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (1983)
Prenderast, Mark: The Ambient Century (2000)
Robbins, Ira: Trouser Press Record Guide (1985)
Robbins, Ira: Trouser Press Guide to '90s Rock (1997)
Scaruffi, Piero: Storia della Musica Rock (1991)
Southern, Eileen: The Music of Black Americans (1971)

20th Century Music

The Modern/20th Century Era (1900 - Present)

With the coming of the 20th century another evolution in the musical world emerged. While some of the early 20th century music can be seen as extensions of the late Romantic style, much of 20th century music can be seen as a rebellion. Composers did not look to build on what was standard but again created music freely and used sounds that went against the current grain. Twentieth century music can be described as being more refined, vague in form, delicate, and having a mysterious atmosphere. Twentieth century music is an era that is hard to define in terms of musical style. The only easy way to define 20th century music is that it does not fit into the Romantic era's requirements. And because of its own expression and orchestral technique it does not fit into any other category but its own. This time period spawned many new terms for musical styles because of the diversity of music that was being written. Some common examples are atonality, expressionism (seen in Schoenberg's early music), neo-Romanticism neo-Romanticism, and neo-Classicism Neo-Classicism. As was true in the Romantic era, nationalism nationalism was still an important musical device used during the first half of the 20th century. Composers utilized folk songs to enriched their music. Examples can be seen in the music of Raplh Vaughan Williams (England), Bela Bartok (Hungary), Heitor Villa Lobos (Brazil) and Aaron Copland (USA). Jazz and popular musical styles influenced composers from both the United States and Europe. In 20th century musical styles traditional forms and structures were broken up and recreated or composed using non-Western musical techniques and abstract ideas. Technology also became an extremely important factor in the music making during this time period. Composers have been known to use recording tape as a compositional tool. Electronically created sounds are used in combination with other electronic sounds or played together with traditional music instruments. Most recently, the use of computer technology has affected the world of music making. Some ways in which computers currently alter the face of the music world are by manipulating the performance of instruments in real time.

Romantic Music

The Romantic Era(1850 - 1920 C.E.)
The Romantic era was a period of great change and emancipation. While the Classical era had strict laws of balance and restraint, the Romantic era moved away from that by allowing artistic freedom, experimentation, and creativity. The music of this time period was very expressive, and melody became the dominant feature. Composers even used this expressive means to display nationalism nationalism. This became a driving force in the late Romantic period, as composers used elements of folk music to express their cultural identity. As in any time of change, new musical techniques came about to fit in with the current trends. Composers began to experiment with length of compositions, new harmonies, and tonal relationships. Additionally, there was the increased use of dissonance dissonance and extended use of chromaticism chromaticism. Another important feature of Romantic music was the use of color. While new instruments were constantly being added to the orchestra, composers also tried to get new or different sounds out of the instruments already in use. One of the new forms was the symphonic poem symphonic poem, which was an orchestral work that portrayed a story or had some kind of literary or artistic background to it. Another was the art song art song, which was a vocal musical work with tremendous emphasis placed on the text or the symbolical meanings of words within the text. Likewise, opera became increasingly popular, as it continued to musically tell a story and to express the issues of the day. Some of the themes that composers wrote about were the escape from political oppression, the fates of national or religious groups, and the events which were taking place in far off settings or exotic climates. This allowed an element of fantasy to be used by composers. During the Romantic period, the virtuoso virtuoso began to be focused. Exceptionally gifted performers - pianists, violinists, and singers -- became enormously popular. Liszt, the great Hungarian pianist/composer, reportedly played with such passion and intensity that women in the audience would faint. Most composers were also virtuoso performers; it was inevitable that the music they wrote would be extremely challenging to play.

Romantic Music

The Romantic Era(1850 - 1920 C.E.)
The Romantic era was a period of great change and emancipation. While the Classical era had strict laws of balance and restraint, the Romantic era moved away from that by allowing artistic freedom, experimentation, and creativity. The music of this time period was very expressive, and melody became the dominant feature. Composers even used this expressive means to display nationalism nationalism. This became a driving force in the late Romantic period, as composers used elements of folk music to express their cultural identity. As in any time of change, new musical techniques came about to fit in with the current trends. Composers began to experiment with length of compositions, new harmonies, and tonal relationships. Additionally, there was the increased use of dissonance dissonance and extended use of chromaticism chromaticism. Another important feature of Romantic music was the use of color. While new instruments were constantly being added to the orchestra, composers also tried to get new or different sounds out of the instruments already in use. One of the new forms was the symphonic poem symphonic poem, which was an orchestral work that portrayed a story or had some kind of literary or artistic background to it. Another was the art song art song, which was a vocal musical work with tremendous emphasis placed on the text or the symbolical meanings of words within the text. Likewise, opera became increasingly popular, as it continued to musically tell a story and to express the issues of the day. Some of the themes that composers wrote about were the escape from political oppression, the fates of national or religious groups, and the events which were taking place in far off settings or exotic climates. This allowed an element of fantasy to be used by composers. During the Romantic period, the virtuoso virtuoso began to be focused. Exceptionally gifted performers - pianists, violinists, and singers -- became enormously popular. Liszt, the great Hungarian pianist/composer, reportedly played with such passion and intensity that women in the audience would faint. Most composers were also virtuoso performers; it was inevitable that the music they wrote would be extremely challenging to play.

Music Of Classical Era

Music Of the Classical Era (1750-1820 C.E.)
Although the Classical Era lasted for only 70 years, there was a substantial change in the music that was being produced. Classical music placed a greater stress on clarity with regard to melodic expression and instrumental color. Although opera and vocal music (both sacred and secular) were still being written, orchestral literature was performed on a much broader basis. The orchestra gained more color and flexibility as clarinets, flutes, oboes, and bassoons became permanent members of the orchestra. The classical style was dominated by homophony homophony, which consisted of a single melodic line and an accompaniment. New forms of composition were developed to adapt to this style. The most important of these forms was the sonata sonata which was in instrumental music. This form continued to change and evolve throughout the classical period, and it is important to note that the classical sonata was very different from the sonatas written by Baroque composers. The early 1700s reflected a musical style known as Rococo. This style served as a transition from the Baroque to the Classical Era. Rococo, which developed in France, is actually an art term that described a new art style which was both a light and embellished. Musically speaking, it is refered to as style galant. In Germany, after 1750, the style galant became empfindsamer stil. With this change in name came an added element of expressiveness and sentimentality. As classical music evolved, distinctive characteristics developed. Changes in form were seen along with changes in phrase structure. Shorter phraases and well defined cadences became more prevalent. During this time period, a favorite accompaniment pattern was the Alberti bass (name for Dominico Alberti), which featured a broken chord progression. The melodies of the Classical era were more compact and diatonic. Harmony was less structured. It used the tonic, dominant, and subdominant chords. In addition, during this period, diatonic harmony was more common then chromatic. Composers mainly used chords in triadic form and occasionally used seventh chords in their compositions. The four major composers of the Classical era were Haydn, Mozart, Gluck, and Beethoven. These composers wrote extensively for vocal and instrumental mediums.

Music Of Renaissance Period

The Renaissance Period
(1400 - 1600 C.E.) The Renaissance era encompasses Western music history from 1400 to the begining of the 1600’s. This period in time marked the rebirth of humanism, and the revival of cultural achievements for their own sake in all forms of art, including music. The word "Renaissance" in itself is defined as a "rebirth"or a "reconstruction". During this time, artists and musicians produced works that displayed more artistic freedom and individualism. This creativity allowed artists to abandon the stricter ways of the Medieval Era. Their art forms rediscovered the ancient Greek ideals. The great masters of the Renaissance were revered in their own lifetimes (rather than after their deaths), which was different from most of their Medieval predecessors. With the new printing techniques, music and musical ideas were able to be preserved and distributed to the people. The distinctive musical sounds of the Renaissance era were comprised of a smooth, imitative, polyphonic polyphonic style, as seen in the music of Byrd, Palestrina, and Lassus. While sacred music sacred music remained of great importance, secular music secular music was starting to become increasingly common. Therefore, the polyphonic style was not only used in sacred music, but also in secular madrigals madrigals. The repertoire of instrumental music also began to grow considerably. New instruments were invented, including two keyboard instruments called the clavichord and virginal. In addition, many existing instruments were enhanced. The lute became the favored instrument of the time period, and it was established as the standard instrument for family music making during the 16th century. Masses Masses and motets motets were the primary forms for sacred vocal polyphony. These were accompanied by the lute or a small instrumental ensemble or consort. Secular vocal forms included motets, madrigals and songs, while instrumental pieces were usually short polyphonic works or music for dancing. Renaissance polyphony was harmonious when compared with the Medieval style. Imitation was a method that composers used to make elaborate music more coherent and to give the listener a sense of arrangement. Imitation, where one melodic line shares, or "imitates," the same musical theme as a previous melodic line became an important polyphonic technique. Imitative polyphony can be easily heard in the music of Byrd, Gibbons, and Gabrieli. Additionally, the masses and motets of composers such as Josquin also displayed the imitative polyphonic style. Imitative polyphony was so important that it continued into the Baroque period, especially in sacred music for the church.

The Medieval Music

Music of Medieval Era
(800 - 1400 C.E.)

]The Medieval Era is the longest and most remote period of musical history. It is important to note that this musical era consists of almost a thousand years worth of music. For most of the middle ages, the Church was the focal point of social life, learning, and the arts. Saint Gregory, who was pope from 590 - 640 C.E., is said to have organized a huge repetoire of chants that developed during the first centuries of the Christian church. Thus the term of "Gregorian Chant" came about.

Early Medieval music notation did not look like the notation that is used in present day music. The earliest signs of a notational system notational system for music used neumes. For a long time, musical notation consisted of the pitch or note that was to be sung. Other musical notation, such as rhythm didn't begin until the 12th or 13th centuries.

Gregorian Chant is monophonic , having one melodic line without an accompaniment. It is said to be very serene, with pure shapes of melody. It is not known who wrote the melodies of the Gregorian Chant. Similar to folk melodies, it probably changed over time as it was passed down through generations.

Toward the latter part of the Middle Ages, music consisted of two or more melodic lines that were heard simultaneously, called polyphony . This appeared around the 1200s. Polyphony was more difficult to compose than the monophonic chant, because a composer had to combine multiple melodic lines in a way that would be pleasing to the listener. Most of the Medieval polyphonic music was anonymous, as the names of composers were never written down. However, there are a few exceptions, as some composers had works so important that their names were preserved along with their music.

Although little of it has been preserved, secular song was important to the medieval era.. Secular song was monophonic and stylistically more diversified than plain song. It was stronger, and utilized regular rhythms, and had short rhythmic patterns. It was generally modal but favored major (Ionian) and minor (Aeolian) modes.